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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529499">Deer Canyon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pteridophyte/pseuds/pteridophyte'>pteridophyte</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agent Pendergast Series - Douglas Preston &amp; Lincoln Child</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Torture, Whump, and the plot is mostly a vehicle for hurt/comfort, bit of good old-fashioned Pendergast-D’Agosta-Hayward bonding, would be a case fic except it's only the last 25 percent of a case</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:27:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529499</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pteridophyte/pseuds/pteridophyte</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>‘ “You were right about the mayor’s aide,” was the first thing that came out of D’Agosta’s mouth. “And the bartender. But you would’ve done better to accuse every single person in this damn city.” ’</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pendergast, D’Agosta, Hayward, several miles worth of Sonoran mountains, and a mob of seventeen crazed small-town Arizonans. What could go wrong?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Vincent D'Agosta &amp; Aloysius Pendergast &amp; Laura Hayward</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Deer Canyon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>See notes at the end for warnings</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>What’s the chance that the entire police department would be corrupt? Deer Canyon, Arizona had to be the worst-run town in the history of the country. The mayor was a sleazebag, that was obvious from the start, and so was the police chief’s openness to a little underhand dealing. But what took the cake was that the three other officers, the secretary, and even the goddamn janitor were corrupt as hell. And speaking of the cake, it had been sitting uneasy and heavy in D’Agosta’s stomach ever since that greasy, too-warm lunch he’d had at the diner seven hours ago.</p>
<p>He fell hard to his knees when they threw him in the holding cell; gradually advancing age and the extra weight in his gut already made those ache quite enough. Then he took a look into the neighboring cell and had to make a conscious effort to keep the digesting cake inside his stomach.</p>
<p>So that’s where Pendergast had gotten to. D’Agosta wondered how they’d caught him: he was more slippery than a greased eel. But once he had been caught, given the state he was in, it was no wonder he hadn’t gotten back out.</p>
<p>Pendergast’s wrists and ankles were lashed together with shiny-sharp loops of barbed wire, the skin torn to ribbons beneath. His blood was smeared across the floor in congealing layers of boot prints tracked around the cell. And the crusted stiffness of his suit spoke of more, and worse, injuries beneath. But even as the footsteps of the police chief faded away from the cell block, Pendergast contorted himself, bringing his bound hands around to the front to pick at the wire around his ankles.</p>
<p>“You were right about the mayor’s aide,” was the first thing that came out of D’Agosta’s mouth. It was a stupid way to start a conversation with a blood-smeared friend, but he continued. “And the bartender. But you would’ve done better to accuse every single person in this damn city.”</p>
<p>Pendergast’s eyebrow-raise was nearly audible.</p>
<p>“Fuck, Pendergast, I’m sorry.” His words came out fast. “I should’ve come the minute I got the letter. And I should’ve called the New York field office like you asked. It’s just… it sounded so crazy. And you’ve never been known for going easy on the officers. Well, better late than never?” He gave a crooked smile.</p>
<p>“Constance?” Pendergast. His voice was weaker than D’Agosta expected, even considering the volume of blood tracked around the cell.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Called me after you never checked in with her Tuesday.”</p>
<p>“Vincent,” Pendergast said, a little louder and stronger than before at the expense of tone. He sounded hoarse. “Fill me in, if you will.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta leaned his side against the bars between their two cells and started talking. The hostility he'd encountered from everyone the moment he arrived in the town four days ago, the hints that there was something bigger going on behind the three deaths, the traces showing that Pendergast had been on the same trail just days previous. Then the day before, Laura arrived without notice to play the good corrupt cop to D’Agosta’s bad and virtuous. He explained how she’d wriggled her way far enough into their good graces to get a glimpse of the full scope of their operation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Pendergast worked the embedded barbs out of his flesh, freeing his ankles with hands slippery with blood from their own bindings.</p>
<p>With a few words summarizing how the officers had hunted him down, the story was over. The only sound was the scrape of barbed wire on the concrete floor. D’Agosta opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again and asked, “How’d they get you?”</p>
<p>Pendergast stilled for a moment. “I didn’t realize the police officers were directly involved. They must have contacted the FBI to enquire about me and received in return an earful about a rogue intractable Southerner.” His ankles were free, and he kicked off his shoes and socks to brace his toes against the wire around his wrists. “They kindly allowed the rear of my head to become familiar with a crowbar while my back was turned, then bound my limbs with this wire and enacted some other measures to make me less argumentative.” He gestured at his arm, and D’Agosta wondered what was hidden beneath the stiff black fabric.</p>
<p>“Three questions, Vincent,” Pendergast continued. “First, have you consumed any water since you arrived in town? Second, how do you feel? And lastly, could you please walk in a straight line by placing one foot directly in front of the other?”</p>
<p>“Answers are: no, like I should’ve picked the salad at lunch, and I haven’t been drinking.”</p>
<p>“All the same, indulge me.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta walked a slow steady line to the barred center wall of the cell. The agent nodded in satisfaction but said nothing, then returned to focusing on his bound hands. He abandoned hope of unknotting the tightly wound wire and instead pushed it forcibly off, digging deep gouges into his hands. D’Agosta winced; Pendergast did not.</p>
<p>“Why’d you ask me about water?” D’Agosta asked.</p>
<p>“A new well has recently been constructed in the town.”</p>
<p>“Something wrong with that?”</p>
<p>“Potentially,” Pendergast said, and when he failed to elaborate, D’Agosta sighed and let the near-silence return. He cast a closer look at where his fellow captive was replacing his shoes. Pendergast was thin and pale, but that wasn’t new, and D’Agosta would’ve been more concerned if he’d been anything but. What was new was the way he moved, grabbing his limp left arm with his right in order to reposition it, like the limb was useless and paralyzed.</p>
<p>Pendergast tied the laces one-handed and then sat back.</p>
<p>“Now what?” D’Agosta asked.</p>
<p>Pendergast gave the slightest sly smile. “Now, my dear Vincent, we escape.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Now” turned out to be a relative term. Pendergast shushed all comments from D’Agosta and sat silently against the back wall of the cell, knees to his chest, and waited in complete silence for more than an hour. Then, with a head-tilt like a honing dog, he listened for a moment and rose lightly to his feet. “It’s time.”</p>
<p>“Cells like this focus more on points of egress that lead to the main body of the station,” Pendergast explained, grabbing the bars between his cell and D’Agosta’s and shimmying up one-handed until he reached the ceiling. Miraculously, he let go with his arm and supported himself with bloodied feet jammed between the bars. He reached up to the ceiling and removed a panel. “The architects of older police stations generally made very certain that there were no easily accessible air vents that lead to the above-ceiling space past the walls of the cell. They generally were, however, a little more lax about vents leading into the neighboring cells.” As he spoke, he anchored his hand in the space above and slithered up. A moment later, a panel above D’Agosta’s head shifted and Pendergast’s silvery eyes looked out. </p>
<p>“What’s the plan?” D’Agosta asked.</p>
<p>“The plan is for you to yell as if I’m an unforgiveable traitor who’s escaped and left you behind.”</p>
<p>So that’s what D’Agosta did. To be honest, it felt good. Finally expelling the frustration that he’d built up over the past four days. Anger at the corrupt leaders and the sketchy citizens and their disgusting diner burst out of him in the form of a fuck-ton of expletives.</p>
<p>Above him, Pendergast laughed quietly at the full span of humanity’s ability to string obscenities together.</p>
<p>No more than thirty seconds later, two policemen, one police chief, the receptionist, and a janitor slid to an unbalanced stop in front of D’Agosta’s cell, a safe distance from Pendergast’s. They took in the empty cell and scrutinized the ceiling to ensure no one was clinging quietly from the pipes. Then they looked around the back rooms of the station, asking no questions and saying no words.</p>
<p>The police chief took a step too close to D’Agosta’s cell, a mistake he would never have made with the cell of his slippery FBI captive. In an instant, Pendergast was launching himself from the ceiling; D’Agosta could have sworn he didn’t even touch the ground before he had the chief’s wrist in his good hand. With a jerk, he pulled the arm inside and broke it against the bars. The chief screamed. Pendergast used the moment of distraction to slip the keys out of the police chief’s pocket.</p>
<p>By the time the three others reached the cell, Pendergast was hurtling out of it. All four collided in a cloud of swinging limbs.	</p>
<p>Pendergast was weak, even D’Agosta could see it, and outnumbered three to one, and hampered by one useless arm. But even as a shocking number of blows made it past his blocks, his tenacious speed didn’t abandon him. He twisted and darted through rapidly depleting strength, and before D’Agosta could as much as step out of the cell, the three adversaries were on the ground. Groaning, not unconscious. Pendergast could clearly do no more, weaving on his feet. He gestured at D’Agosta, and they sprinted out towards the front of the station.</p>
<p>“Captain!” Pendergast yelled as they burst into the main room. “With us.”</p>
<p>In a second of surprise, D’Agosta saw that Laura was standing by the desk, eyes wide as she stared at her two coworkers hurling towards the front door. Without even a moment of hesitation, she pushed away from the final officer at her side and followed them.</p>
<p>They flew into the street in the aftermath of the first dusting of the winter, cold pellets of snow scattered on the hard ground. No one was on the streets, and the clouds above blanketed the city in frigid silence.</p>
<p>“Into the mountains,” Pendergast hissed at D’Agosta and Laura as they ran. “Almost all of the virtuous citizens of this fine town are in possession of firearms and, judging by the curious conditions of life in this area, will need no encouragement to use them.”</p>
<p>They brushed between two old houses and headed up into the mountains that sloped up behind them as the cloud-shrouded sun slipped lower. Their feet crunched on the hard, rocky ground and caught on unseen stones.</p>
<p>They darted up the rough slope, angling to the left towards the distant gap between two peaks that would lead them into the endless succession of mountains beyond. All they needed, D’Agosta knew, was to get deep enough out there that the townspeople would abandon the chase until morning. Then they could light a sheltered fire, rest, and figure out what to do for the next day.</p>
<p>They’d made it barely an eighth of a mile when Pendergast paused and desperately hooked his good arm into the twisted branches of a stunted oak tree. He stood gasping for a second, half-supported by the tree, then collapsed to the ground.</p>
<p>D’Agosta leapt forward to catch him. He was surprisingly light. D’Agosta lowered him to the ground in a controlled fall and knelt in front of him, looking for injuries other than the cuts on his face and the barbed wire slices ringing his wrists. He saw nothing obvious, but Pendergast still sat on the ground, breathing quickly and shallowly.</p>
<p>Hayward came walking back to them. “What’s wrong with you?”</p>
<p>Pendergast waved a hand and started to rise. “Nothing serious, Captain. Previous blood loss combined with a period of food and water deprivation.”</p>
<p>It was to dark to see anything other than a flash of white sclera, but D’Agosta could practically hear Hayward roll her eyes. He knew how she felt about Pendergast’s enigmatic tendencies, and he knew that she would label this as the same level of macho bullshit as D’Agosta not asking for help even if he had no idea what he was doing. Personally, D’Agosta saw it as a whole new level of insanity, but whether it was better or worse he hadn’t decided. </p>
<p>Hayward gave a feather-light touch to Pendergast’s left arm, and he stiffened. “Nothing serious?” she asked with a trace of wry amusement.</p>
<p>“Perhaps slightly more than nothing,” Pendergast responded. He gestured to the scarf wrapped around Hayward’s neck. “May I?”</p>
<p>“I was about to suggest it.”</p>
<p>Pendergast arranged the scarf around his neck and shoulder to serve as a sling, then hit an impasse. He could only bring his injured arm to the correct altitude by holding it up with the opposite arm. Without support, it flopped limply to his side. D’Agosta stepped forward to help, concern swirling in his stomach.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They continued. The light faded gradually, nearly two hours of frigid daylight before the first brushstrokes of pink bled out into the sky. Not long after, all traces of the sunset disappeared, leaving only the dark blue tones reflected from the twilight sky. The blue faded as well, and as it went it stole the color from the rest of the landscape until all that was left were bushes and stones in hardly-visible shades of grey.</p>
<p>“We should stop,” Hayward said, the first words spoken in almost an hour. Pendergast was far too exhausted for idle conversation, D’Agosta too out of breath, and Hayward too tense. “It’s risky,” she continued, “since the townsmen almost certainly have flashlights and can keep moving in the dark. Plus, they’ll be able to see our footprints until this dusting of snow melts.”</p>
<p>“I think you’ll find that the darkness and associated difficulty with movement to be a not inconsiderable challenge for our pursuers.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean by that?” Hayward asked. Pendergast waved the question away.</p>
<p>“We need a fire,” D’Agosta said. “It’s more than a few degrees too cold to survive a night unprotected.”</p>
<p>“Matches?” Hayward asked. There was a movement to his left and the flickering flame of a lighter illuminated the trio.</p>
<p>“Didn’t they search you before they threw you in the cell?” Hayward said.</p>
<p>“Naturally,” Pendergast responded. Hayward gave a quiet huff of familiar annoyance when he refused to elaborate.</p>
<p>Twenty minutes later, plus at least three stubbed toes and a dozen cactus spines removed from D’Agosta’s calf, they had a fair pile of firewood. It was mostly dried-out cholla cactus and dead bushes, but it would work well enough.</p>
<p>Pendergast leaned towards their improvised fire ring at the same time that Hayward reached out a hand to take the lighter from him, and there was a brief power struggle over whose fire-lighting method was superior. Brief power struggles and disagreements over methods, D’Agosta mused, appeared to be essential to Pendergast’s and Hayward’s dynamic.</p>
<p>In the end, the fire was lit and the three of them huddled slightly too close to the welcome warmth. After a moment, Pendergast shifted.</p>
<p>“We should place stones in the blaze,” the agent said. “When the fire has run its course, they will still be hot. Burying them a few inches beneath where we will sleep will allow the stones to radiate heat throughout the night.”</p>
<p>“Where’d you learn that?” Hayward asked.</p>
<p>Pendergast gave a slight smile. “Dr. Kelley. I visited her briefly in Utah during one of my recent, ah, vacations from the Bureau, and we had several, ah, interesting conversations over coffee and tea.”</p>
<p>Hayward snorted. “I can imagine.” She’d never spent a great amount of time with the archaeologist, but D’Agosta knew that even a brief introduction to Nora often left quite an impression.</p>
<p>And Nora’s teaching held true. An hour later they curled up on the sandy ground above buried rocks. D’Agosta pressed himself close to the warmth radiating up through the rough soil, and he didn’t wake once in the night.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>A sound tickled at Pendergast’s hearing like a feather would tickle skin. He woke with the memory of a soft noise in his ears: sticks hitting up against each other. But the sound was sharp around the edges. Not the sort of noise made by twigs with bark, but by hard, smooth wood. His mind ran through the possibilities, half awake. Twigs stripped of bark by an animal, an artist with pencils capturing the mountain sunrise, arrows in a quiver. Arrows. Dennis the bowhunting aficionado, and D’Agosta’s regrettably visible red jacket.</p>
<p>He leapt forward with a cry as the distant twang of a bowstring sounded in his ears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>D’Agosta slept soundly all night and woke to being tackled where he laid.</p>
<p>“Whaaat?!” he said, confused and hardly awake, as Pendergast shoved him across the ground.</p>
<p>“Captain!” Pendergast yelled, but she was already diving into a stand of bushes as Pendergast hauled D’Agosta along with a hand clutched on his shirt. The two of them landed in a heap once the momentum ran out. Pendergast lay on top of him for a second, stunned and half-limp, as the metallic smell of blood filled D’Agosta’s nostrils. Then Pendergast was up and running after Hayward.</p>
<p>Once she saw them behind her, she darted around the curved slope, parallel to the valley below, seeking an angle where they’d be safe from the unseen archer. D’Agosta pushed himself to run almost as fast as his nimble-footed wife.</p>
<p>In the rising sun, light glinted off of the two feet of arrow protruding from Pendergast’s shoulder. D’Agosta almost tripped himself.</p>
<p>Laura was suddenly gone. D’Agosta spun around once before catching sight of her pressing herself against the side of the mountain behind an outcropping of rock. She pulled him in next to her, and Pendergast followed.</p>
<p>“Oh, shit,” she addressed the arrow. Blood was already soaking Pendergast’s suit and dripping to the ground. It was his in his bad shoulder, at least: still bound to his chest with Hayward’s scarf. Thank God for disastrous miracles.</p>
<p>“You took that arrow for me,” D’Agosta realized, thinking back to his abrupt awakening. He was surprised to hear the depth of disapproval in his own voice.</p>
<p>“It was either this, or in the center of your abdomen. Dennis of Deer Canyon is not the sort to miss a shot, even from a hundred yards away.” His face was growing paler by the minute.</p>
<p>“If that hit your artery, you aren’t going to make it out of here,” Hayward observed.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Pendergast said, steel-voiced. “Which of you has better fine motor control?”</p>
<p>They gave him mirror looks of confusion. D’Agosta shrugged at Hayward.</p>
<p>“Good. You, Vincent, look carefully around the corner of that rock and see if you can spot our shooter. He should be across the gap, on the opposite slope. Captain Hayward, if you wouldn’t mind, I need you to help me remove this arrow.” As he spoke, he leaned against the rock and slid to the ground.</p>
<p>D’Agosta cautiously poked his head out around the rock. The sun was just rising above the opposite mountain, glaring into his eyes. He looked across from their own mountain and to the opposite slope, over the stream at the junction of the two mountains far below. For a minute all he saw was the irregular shapes of thorny bushes and short trees scattered across the dirt and rocks, all covered in a scattered dusting of snow. Then, movement: two thirds of the way to the peak. A small form heading downward at an angle.</p>
<p>D’Agosta ducked back behind the rock to see Hayward inspecting the arrow. It went in at an angle, starting at the front edge of his shoulder and going deep, probably buried in the shoulder bone at the back. It would have been much easier had it managed to go all the way through.</p>
<p>“Judging by the side of the entrance, it’s an expanding broadpoint,” Pendergast was saying. “Three blades close against the side of the shaft. They push out once they encounter a solid surface. It increases wound size without affecting the aerodynamics of the arrow.”</p>
<p>Now that he spoke, D’Agosta saw that the opening was unexpectedly wide. Two inches across, shaped almost like a trinity, with the shaft in the center. Hayward leaned closer. “Four blades, not three. See how the third point is perpendicular to the other two? The fourth didn’t deploy. And you’d better hope it doesn’t now, because if it does it’ll sever your axillary artery.”</p>
<p>“That’s…” D’Agosta began to ask.</p>
<p>“Not something you can walk away from.”</p>
<p>“The expanded blades detach,” Pendergast told Hayward. “You’ll only have to reach the screwing mechanism on the shaft of the arrow, then pull the blades out separately. The arrow will slide out easily without the larger blades holding it in.”</p>
<p>Hayward pushed back the sleeves of her coat and gave Pendergast an uncertain look. He just leaned back and braced himself, and she slid a finger into the wound, following the course of the arrow. If she triggered the last blade to open, they’d be walking away from Pendergast’s body on this mountainside.</p>
<p>Even from a distance D’Agosta could see the nervous strain in Hayward’s neck. Pendergast was taut as a tension cable with unvoiced agony. When she pressed in a second finger to grip the free blades, he involuntarily arched his back, pressing his head against the rock. But it was fast after that point, the four blades quickly removed. The arrow came out with only a slight yank to free it from the bone, and Hayward clamped a hand over the gush of blood that followed.</p>
<p>They all waited there for several minutes. The three of them in a bloodstained triangle: two crouching on the ground, one slumped limply against the rock. Hayward cleared her throat and pressed down a little harder. “I think it’s slowing.”</p>
<p>Pendergast nodded, eyes still closed. “Vincent, did you see our friend?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. He’s on the opposite mountain, but heading this way.”</p>
<p>“That’s not a quick walk,” Hayward observed. “I’d estimate it’ll take him at least an hour and a half to make it over here. He must’ve made a guess at which direction we went out of the valley and chosen wrong. But he knows where we are now.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Pendergast agreed. He gently pushed Hayward’s hand out of the way to reveal an entry wound that, while alarmingly wide, was now only bleeding lightly. With a sharp motion from the opposite arm, he tore a stretch of fabric from the bottom of his shirt and let the fabric of the sling press it in place. He stood up, wavered for a second, and immediately collapsed again.</p>
<p>Both D’Agosta and Hayward caught him on his way down and lowered him to the ground.</p>
<p>“Too much blood loss, and too quick a change in elevation,” D’Agosta said. “He passed out.”</p>
<p>Hayward stood and squinted down at him, judging. “We should see what else is wrong with him, while we can without complaints.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta nodded and reached down to carefully unbutton Pendergast’s shirt. He undid it halfway and pulled the fabric aside.</p>
<p>Hayward sucked in a breath. The pale skin was marred with bruises, which D’Agosta imagined was not uncommon for the violence-prone agent, but in places the bruieses were layered with burns. D’Agosta could see two splotches, red and wet with the skin sloughed off. “Second degree. Fuck, this is not Pendergast’s week,” he said with an exhausted laugh.</p>
<p>“What on earth did he do to make them do this to him? It looks like chemical burns,” Hayward observed. D’Agosta quickly redid the buttons as Pendergast began to stir.</p>
<p>It only took a glare from the silvery eyes to make Hayward and D’Agosta step back. Pendergast braced his good arm on the rock behind his back and rose again, more slowly this time. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>D’Agosta sighed, feeling the twist in his stomach. “I’d just about kill for a hamburger right now. And a bed, a roof, and a pint of O-negative. Though that last one’s not for me.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid we might not stumble upon a fast food restaurant or a hospital on this mountain, but we do have access to gambel oak, juniper berries, and some slightly winter-withered prickly pear plants,” Pendergast said. “You recall my original reason for visiting the fine and infamous town of Deer Canyon?”</p>
<p>“Margo’s presentation at some national pharmacology conference, right?”</p>
<p>“Correct. She regaled me with stories of the native flora and their uses to the Havasupai that once lived here. As a result, I am now a veritable font of information about the local plant life.” Pendergast plucked a hard blue-gray berry from a bushy evergreen.</p>
<p>D’Agosta accepted the berry and bit down gingerly. A little weird. Sappy. “Not exactly a hamburger, but not bad.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They’d been lucky so far. Almost twelve hours out in the mountains with no supplies and half a town’s worth of angry crazed country folk after them. But their luck was about to run out.</p>
<p>Hayward saw it first. She was leading their little procession, as always, when she stiffened and her steps faltered. Pendergast heard it next, freezing with his head down and ears perked. D’Agosta had shitty hearing and was too busy watching Pendergast and his own feet to notice anything else. But he got the gist of the situation from his two companions.</p>
<p>All three of them paused in the forest. Not a New York forest, with hundred-foot oaks, but an Arizona forest with trees that would hardly brush the roof of a one-story suburban ranch house. The dry leaf litter was hardly deep enough to soften the rocks beneath, and twenty feet to the right the trees ended in a drop-off leading to a sheer cliff studded with tenacious cacti and a waterless streambed far below. It was almost peaceful in the cool dappled sunlight of winter, as the three of them froze to watch and listen.</p>
<p>They had half a second of silent stillness before it was upon them. “It” being a team of angry men and women armed with hunting knives and ancient rifles. Some were thin and old, but at least three were young and musclebound, and all together they outnumbered D’Agosta and the others six to one.</p>
<p>D’Agosta wasted no time. He barreled towards the first man he saw, grabbing the hand that was guiding a knife towards his chest. They grappled for control. D’Agosta kneed him between the legs and allowed himself a little smile. Time to fight dirty.</p>
<p>Then two other people were on him, a man with a rifle and a woman with a six-inch hunting knife. It took every ounce of his fighting ability to deflect the knife and keep the gun pointed away. They were uncoordinated, surprisingly so, but that didn’t make up for their numbers.</p>
<p>On his right, Hayward rolled on the ground with a wiry woman, kicking and punching. And on his left, Pendergast was fighting with his usual impossible speed. He took three men down, but he was hampered by his injuries, and a woman tore the sling off his arm, revealing the blood and the limp, useless limb. With an expression of crazed joy, she drove her fist into his shoulder and he fell back. In an instant he was pinned firmly to the ground by three others. Which was where D’Agosta and Hayward joined him a moment later.</p>
<p>Three men pulled a weakly resisting Pendergast to his feet and manhandled him off to the side, towards the cliff. They panted excitedly, almost obscenely, in anticipation of the kill.</p>
<p>“It’s terribly open out here for you, isn’t it?” Pendergast’s calm voice sounded. “It must be close to a hundred feet to the bottom of this cliff.”</p>
<p>The men paused and stiffened, their eyes darting from side to side. </p>
<p>“In fact, if you look, I do believe you can see all the way to the bottom of the creekbed.”</p>
<p>There was a strange panic in their eyes, something unnatural. The men advanced no farther, refused to draw any closer to the edge, but it was too late: the cliff was close enough.</p>
<p>Pendergast’s heels were anchored firmly on solid rock blanketed with dry leaf litter, but the ground ended mere feet behind him, dropping a hundred feet down to the dry wash beneath. In their little square of forest, the empty air behind him looked abrupt and stark-bright.</p>
<p>With one quick shove, barely an afterthought, one of the men pushed Pendergast backwards. He teetered for a drawn-out second, his arms pinwheeling unevenly like a bird with a broken wing.</p>
<p>And with shocking silence, Pendergast overbalanced and slipped off the edge.</p>
<p>“Pendergast?” D’Agosta breathed.</p>
<p>Everyone stared at the now-empty cliff’s edge, and Hayward seized the moment of distraction to jam her elbow into the face of the woman restraining her and wrestle away the rifle. There was a flurry of movement and the shot of a pistol, and then Hayward was standing several feet off with blood staining her right arm and the rifle held to the woman’s head. “Put your weapons down.”</p>
<p>They complied, setting guns and knives in the leaf litter.</p>
<p>“Now climb to the bottom of this cliff. There’s a rockslide about twenty yards that way.” Hayward gestured behind herself with a turn of her head. “You should be able to slide down without too much chance of injury. If I don’t count all seventeen of you standing in the creekbed in ten minutes, I’ll shoot this woman in the head.”</p>
<p>At first they backed slowly away, but they gained momentum as they went until they were scrambling in the leaves. They may be murderous, but at least they retained enough humanity to care about one of their own.</p>
<p>As soon as they were out of earshot, Hayward grasped the barrel of the rifle and slammed the stock into the woman’s head. She crumpled to the ground. Hayward dropped the firearm and raised a hand to the bloody patch on her sleeve, wincing.</p>
<p>“How bad is it?” D’Agosta asked.</p>
<p>Hayward gingerly tore the sleeve open. “Could be worse. It went straight through the muscle.” She ripped the rest of the sleeve off and used it to bind the wound, tying it with D’Agosta’s help.</p>
<p>D’Agosta eyed the woman on the ground. “She’ll live to be arrested, and the others won’t be able to climb up at the same place they went down. Too steep. It’ll take them several hours to backtrack down the canyon and find another way up.”</p>
<p>Hayward nodded in agreement. D’Agosta saw her eyes stray to the cliff’s edge, the two sets of footprints in the dirt at the edge. Maybe she did care, a little bit.</p>
<p>Hayward experimentally bent her arm, then stood. “We should go.” D’Agosta nodded. He found Hayward’s old scarf on the ground near him, stuffed it in his pocket, and stood.</p>
<p>Without speaking of it, they made their way together to the edge of the cliff and looked over. Somewhere down there was the body of Special Agent Pendergast. When this was all over, they’d come back and find it. D’Agosta’s family had always taught him the value of a good burial.</p>
<p>Something caught his eye. D’Agosta looked down and saw, between the rocky edge of the cliff and the void of the drop below, one pale hand clutched around a tree root. He dropped to his stomach and wriggled forward until his head extended out over the edge.</p>
<p>Pendergast was hanging there, head bowed so that D’Agosta could see nothing but the near-white hair. He swung gently.</p>
<p>“Pendergast!” D’Agosta said with a huge smile. “Ready to come up?”</p>
<p>The agent lifted his head and squinted up. His grip faltered for a second, and D’Agosta quickly grabbed his wrist. “We’ll pull you.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta turned to look up at Hayward and was pleased to see a grin of relief on her face. They pulled him up, switching to the proffered opposite hand once they noticed it was his bad arm in their grasp. At last he slid up over the edge and they all fell back to the ground, breathing hard.</p>
<p>“I see you took your time, but I appreciate that you deigned to pull me up in the end,” Pendergast said in a weak, buttery voice that D’Agosta had never expected to hear again. “I would have called, but this limb is still mostly paralyzed, and it required more concentration than I could spare to maintain my grip.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, what happened there?”</p>
<p>A pause. “It can wait. For now, we need to get out of this area before the good townspeople overcome their acrophobia.” His shoulder was bleeding again, soaking the black fabric of his jacket, but they had to keep going.</p>
<p>“Any theories that we should know about that?” Hayward asked, getting to her feet.</p>
<p>Pendergast waved the question off. “ ‘Theories’ is the operative word. Nothing substantial, and therefore nothing that need be shared.” </p>
<p>“All the same, humor us,” Hayward insisted.</p>
<p>Pendergast capitulated. “Consider the points of interest. The entire population of the town is experiencing coordination and balance problems, as shown by my ability to fight off three people in the police station when I myself was physically weak, and shown as well by their failure to catch up to us in the night: a well-coordinated person can move easily in the dark; a poorly-coordinated person will allow their feet to catch on stones and roots and will stumble easily.”</p>
<p>“Alright, they’re clumsy. But that doesn’t mean anything.”</p>
<p>“On the contrary, that single fact is most eloquent. But it is not the only data point in our possession. Fear of heights, an aversion to vertigo, and generalized rage are also universal in the Deer Canyon citizens.”</p>
<p>“They’re symptoms,” Hayward said.</p>
<p>“Precisely.”</p>
<p>“Symptoms?” D’Agosta questioned.</p>
<p>But Pendergast did not elaborate. Instead, he squinted at Hayward’s bloodied arm. “You’re injured, Captain.”</p>
<p>“It’s not bad. The bullet went straight through, didn’t even hit the bone.”</p>
<p>For an instant, Pendergast looked surprised. Had he really been so out of it that he hadn’t heard the shots, D’Agosta wondered? Then the expression was smoothed over with the usual cool calmness. He eyed the figure on the ground. “It would have been wise to kill them.”</p>
<p>“Seventeen people?” said Hayward. “They need to be convicted, not indiscriminately murdered. Besides, you know they’re not the only group of people out looking for us.”</p>
<p>Pendergast nodded. “It is a moot point now, in any case. Onward?” D’Agosta stood and offered a hand. He nearly had to bodily pull the agent to his feet. “After you.” Pendergast gestured Hayward forward.</p>
<p>They walked in silence for a minute, heading uphill with a slight slope at a speed that was almost robbing D’Agosta of his breath. He was in the back now, strategically located to keep an eye on Pendergast. Someone needed to tell Hayward to slow down if he started weaving or dragging his feet, and that someone was never going to be Pendergast himself. Stubborn bastard.</p>
<p>“Angle more to the east, if you would, Captain,” Pendergast said, breaking the silence.</p>
<p>D’Agosta raised his eyebrows. “We’re not still heading to Cutnel?”</p>
<p>“That was a slow-motion feint, saved for such time as they caught up with us,” said Pendergast. “We’re heading to Cold Spring.”</p>
<p>“Only a mile or so farther, though it’s smaller and doesn’t have its own police department,” Hayward said.</p>
<p>Now it was Pendergast’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You did your research. I’m impressed.”</p>
<p>“I’ve taken a new attitude to anything that you drag Vinnie and me into,” she said with a touch of humor. “And that attitude is: everything’s going to go to shit and people are going to die, so be as prepared as possible.”</p>
<p>“Not an unwise choice, giving our past record. You must have been distressed to find me still alive and clinging to a tree root.” Pendergast glanced up at Hayward in front of him, and D’Agosta could imagine his small smile.</p>
<p>“No, attractive as it is sometimes, you’re not someone I want dead. Several of my superiors, on the other hand…”</p>
<p>D’Agosta snorted. “You should’ve seen her when the visiting police chief tried to lay on the charms. By the time she was done with him, I’d never seen a man more scared for his dignity and his balls.”</p>
<p>They fell into silence again, but it was a friendly silence, almost pleasant. They were exhausted and grimy and hurting, but it was still well above forty degrees and the sun warmed their backs. The shadows on the ground pointed their way east, towards Cold Spring.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Twenty minutes after sunset, when the only light that remained was the slightest hint of dark blue in the sky, Pendergast stumbled for the fourth time. “Laura,” D’Agosta said, his voice full of concern.</p>
<p>She got the message. “Let’s stop in that stand of rocks ahead.”</p>
<p>Since the encounter on the edge of the cliff, they’d skirted around the edge of a peak before plunging down into the streambed below and continuing up between two mountains. D’Agosta was completely exhausted, and unlike his two companions, he didn’t even have blood loss to contend with.</p>
<p>Pendergast half-collapsed in the center of a staggered ring of boulders, and Hayward sat down heavily next to him. “I’ll collect some branches,” D’Agosta said. Hayward moved to stand from her perch on the boulder, but D’Agosta raised a hand to stop her. “No, you sit down. You’re injured, too, you know.”</p>
<p>“Do you need something to use as a bandage for that shoulder?” he heard Hayward asking as he walked away from the boulders. He smiled. To his surprise, Hayward and Pendergast were getting along pretty well. Better than he’d ever seen them.</p>
<p>He returned ten minutes later with an armful of dried cholla cactus and old piñon pine branches. Within half an hour, they had a small fire blazing, with baseball-sized rocks roasting in the center.</p>
<p>They sat as close to the fire as reasonably possible, occasionally wordlessly shifting to relocate someone out of the path of the smoke. Hayward’s voice rose above the sound of crackling branches. “Time for you to fulfill your promise to tell us what happened to your arm,” she directed to Pendergast.</p>
<p>He gave the faintest sigh and scooted back a few inches from the fire to safely (and excruciatingly slowly) pull off his suit jacket. He unbuttoned the shirt below and slipped it off, working around the still-limp left limb.</p>
<p>D’Agosta sucked in a breath and felt Laura stiffen beside him. Pendergast’s arm was swollen and grossly discolored, the puffy skin split half an inch deep on both sides, from elbow to wrist. Halfway down the forearm was a bend like a very slightly flexed second elbow. The limb had obviously been crushed badly, and broken.</p>
<p>“God, Pendergast,” Hayward whispered.</p>
<p>“Why?” was all D’Agosta could say.</p>
<p>Pendergast gave a fleeting smile. “That is a very good question, the answer to which might explain this whole affair. They wanted no information, and I said nothing to offend. Why, then, did they take such delight in causing harm?”</p>
<p>“You need to get a splint on that,” said D’Agosta, unable to take his eyes from the grotesque malformation.</p>
<p>Pendergast looked down in some surprise. “You may be right. Prior to the altercation this afternoon, it had been straight.”</p>
<p>“And you hung from that?” D’Agosta said in disbelief.</p>
<p>“The initial injury happened almost a week ago. And it is healing.” He wiggled his fingers slightly. “I’m regaining some movement.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, looks almost good as new,” D’Agosta said sarcastically. “I’m going to get some sticks and then we’ll splint that up.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta left the warmth of the fire and returned with two green mesquite branches. Hayward was gently probing Pendergast’s arm with her fingertips, and with a quick motion she pressed the bones back into alignment. Pendergast’s only reaction was an inhalation of air and a slight spasming of his half-paralyzed arm muscles.</p>
<p>D’Agosta pulled Hayward’s dirty scarf from his back pocket and used it to firmly bind the sticks to the top and bottom of Pendergast’s arm. Not loose, but not too tight in case the swelling increased.</p>
<p>“I’m not certain about you, but I for one could use some rest,” Pendergast said, his Southern drawl lengthening with exhaustion.</p>
<p>“Seconded,” Hayward said. D’Agosta stood to dig shallow trenches for the warmed stones, and Hayward stubbornly helped despite her gunshot wound. Minutes later, they all collapsed on the ground and let the radiating heat warm their tired bones.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>D’Agosta slept fitfully for no more than half an hour, dreaming of falling and of a monstrous heat rising from below, cooking him like they cooked the stones. He woke with a jolt, feeling far too warm. Was he getting a fever?</p>
<p>He opened his eyes and looked up. It was light out, but the sky was still black. Then the smell hit him: a wave of pine and burning wood.</p>
<p>“Fire!” D’Agosta yelled, scrambling to his feet. Pendergast and Hayward jolted awake. D’Agosta turned to look downhill.</p>
<p>The slope stretched out like the landscape of hell. For hundreds of feet, from the streambed on up, the land burned. The long dry grass had scorched away quickly leaving only black, but the bushes blazed in a maelstrom of fire that turned the night into day.</p>
<p>The fire was only thirty yards below them, and rising fast. “Uphill!” yelled Hayward, leaping to her feet and leading the way at a sprint. D’Agosta spun and was met with a sight that almost stopped him cold. Between them and the peak of the mountain were spires of rock, tall hoodoos that rose straight up from the ground before eroding into soil capped with trees. He looked to his left and to his right: there was no time to run to the sides. The fire would rise and cut them off.</p>
<p>To the wall of stone it was, then. They still had a hundred feet of running before they had to think of a way to surmount this. Less than a minute to learn how to fly.</p>
<p>Hayward was nimble-footed and fast, and Pendergast, weak as he was, was long-limbed and rode adrenaline like a wave. D’Agosta, on the other hand, weighed a few too many pounds and worked out far less than he should. He pushed his legs to their limit, but he was still well behind the other two.</p>
<p>Just before she ran out of space to run, Hayward veered to the right, Pendergast hot on her heels. A rockslide of boulders spilled out between two hoodoos, stretching in a steep ramp to the top.</p>
<p>D’Agosta’s lungs burned, and the heat from the fire scorched his skin. The fire was climbing fast, twice as fast as a running man. With a wave of heat and a foul stench, the hairs on his arms singed off.</p>
<p>He reached the rockslide at last, scrambling up. The others were already ten feet above him. How the hell did they move so fast? The heat was starting to make him dizzy, the smoke billowing forward and choking his lungs. He forced himself not to look back.</p>
<p>Five feet up D’Agosta climbed, then ten. His shoes skidded on the boulders, and rocks shifted beneath him. He skinned his fingers on the rough stone. Fifteen feet.</p>
<p>Hayward and Pendergast were close above him now, stalled at a smooth six-foot boulder with only one smaller stone to serve as a stairstep. Hayward reached above herself and vaulted up. Pendergast followed in a one-armed shuffle. But his jump dislodged the rock below him, and it rolled towards D’Agosta, knocking the neighboring boulders loose as it went.</p>
<p>The wall of fire was directly behind D’Agosta now. No space to jump back to evade the rolling rocks, and no way to climb the now nine feet of smooth boulder in front of him. He felt the skin on the back of his neck blister in a wave of pain.</p>
<p>But then Pendergast appeared, hanging half off the rock by his good arm, stretching the other down towards D’Agosta.</p>
<p>D’Agosta jumped and grabbed it just as the rocks beneath his feet shifted as well. The torque from the rolling rocks he left behind swung him around, and Pendergast’s broken forearm twisted like a rotating third joint. D’Agosta hung there for a moment, fire licking at his ankles, as Pendergast opened his mouth in a scream of agony inaudible above the roar of the fire. Then he clenched his teeth shut and pulled.</p>
<p>D’Agosta was certain the agent wouldn’t have the strength to heave him up, but Laura’s hands appeared, pulling at Pendergast’s shoulders. Slowly, then with increasing speed, D’Agosta rose up and over the rock. Hayward pulled Pendergast, and Pendergast pulled D’Agosta, and in a minute they were above the hoodoos, on solid ground.</p>
<p>They stood together for a second, watching the fire lick at the spires of rock below them. “We aren’t out of the woods yet,” Pendergast said. D’Agosta found himself staring and forcibly averted his eyes, trying to ignore the way Pendergast’s hand was twisted ninety degrees around.</p>
<p>Hayward looked around. “We need to head down the other side. The fire will spread up here soon, and it’s wrapping around the mountain like a pincer.”</p>
<p>“God, not more boulders,” D’Agosta said as they sprinted across the peak.</p>
<p>He was in luck, for once. The only rocks on the other side were small and loose, and the land sloped just halfway down to the valleys below before it rose again in a ridge leading to the next mountain over.</p>
<p>Pendergast moved to continue down, but Hayward grabbed his uninjured shoulder to stop him. “Look.”</p>
<p>Small lights blinked on the next peak. But they weren’t fires, they were buildings rising out of the trees: Cold Spring.</p>
<p>As the fire rose and wrapped around towards the mountain, they flew down the ridge towards the town. D’Agosta’s feet slipped on the loose scree as he ran, and the blistered back of his neck stung with pain. His throat burned from smoke. He coughed, tried to focus on the ground in front of him, and in the light from the fire he made out the red drops on the rocks. He looked up: Pendergast’s shoulder was bleeding again. Hayward’s arm probably was too, after their desperate climb.</p>
<p>Distantly, above the roar of the fire, D’Agosta heard a faint series of yells. He took his eyes off his feet for a second and looked to his right.</p>
<p>Far down on the same ridge, below the fire, was the group of Deer Canyon citizens. They were running, too, desperately trying to escape the fire of their own making. So far, they were succeeding. The fire was moving upwards, towards D’Agosta.</p>
<p>“The fire’s going to reach Cold Spring!” D’Agosta yelled, breathless.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing we can do,” Hayward said back. “We could never get there in time to warn them.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure we’ll get there at all,” D’Agosta said, not loud enough for the others to hear. His lungs were burning and he felt ready to collapse, but the fire was still winning the race. It was only twenty yards below them. By the time they reached the lowest point of the ridge it would be upon them.</p>
<p>The heat on D’Agosta’s sides eased a little, and the breeze stopped blowing his hair. Then the wind started up again, but in the opposite direction, pushing from above and pouring down either side of the ridge. It hit the fire in a wave of sparks, pushing the flames backwards.</p>
<p>Pendergast stopped in his tracks. “The mountain breeze.”</p>
<p>“What?” D’Agosta said in confusion.</p>
<p>“As night falls, the ground loses its warmth. That cools the air as well, reversing the opposite flow of the daytime and causing the air to move downhill. It’s referred to as ‘the mountain breeze.’ The fire will rise no farther.”</p>
<p>They stood there at the lower part of the hill, the flames only thirty feet away but rising no higher.</p>
<p>Below, not fifty yards away, the Deer Canyon hunters were still running. They were trapped in a narrow hurricane eye, a sharp drop to their right and the fire to their left. With a gust of wind the flames spread, leaping thirty feet in a second, igniting bone-dry grasses and leafless bushes. The flames reached out and wrapped around the group of men and women.</p>
<p>A noise rose above the cacophony of the fire, hardly noticeable at first, then growing louder: Screams. Clothing caught fire, then hair, and each person rose in a ball of flame. They kept running at random, the flames streaming out behind them, some heading away from the fire and some into it, a few off the cliff. Brains shutting down beneath the agony, nothing left but a single animal instinct and muscle that had not quite melted away like the skin and fat above it. Eventually they all fell still and were lost from sight in the blaze.</p>
<p>If D’Agosta were wearing a hat, he would’ve taken it off and bowed his head. Murderous or not, at least seventeen people had burned to death. The three of them stood in silence.</p>
<p>“Come,” Pendergast said. “Vincent, Captain. Let us return to civilization.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Half an hour later, they stumbled out of the trees and onto a road at the edge of town. D’Agosta’s lungs were trying to convince him that forcefully expelling them from his mouth would ease the burn from smoke inhalation. Pendergast seemed to have fallen from the adrenaline high and was now close to collapse. Hayward held her arm still at her side, her face tight with pain.</p>
<p>“We’ll need to secure a ride,” Pendergast said casually as they stumbled down the road towards Cold Spring.</p>
<p>“Small town, right?” said D’Agosta. “No hospital, no taxi service. We’ll be best off calling for an ambulance.”</p>
<p>“We can borrow a phone at the nearest open diner – wait, damn, what time is it?” Hayward said.</p>
<p>“From what I can see of the sky through this oppressive smoke, it’s only around eight PM. There should be many establishments still open,” Pendergast said. “But we won’t be needing an ambulance. We have access to an easier, and far more pleasant, form of transportation.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” asked D’Agosta.</p>
<p>“The pharmacology conference is still in session.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>And so it was. The local hotel was small, but still more than sufficient for a gathering of several dozen ethnopharmacologists and their research presentation boards. Once the three strolled into the town proper, it was a mere five minutes before they were stepping into the hotel lobby, covered in dirt and blood, smelling strongly of smoke, and almost staggering with exhaustion.</p>
<p>The clerk at the front desk reluctantly pointed them to the hotel’s sole conference room. Pendergast pushed the door open with his one functional arm and bowed to motion D’Agosta and Hayward in before him. Several people looked up when they entered, and several more startled when Pendergast raised his voice.</p>
<p>“Dr. Green,” he said above the background conversation. “My sincerest apologies for missing your presentation. I wonder if I might impose upon you for a ride to the nearest hospital for my two colleagues and myself?”</p>
<p>Margo’s head jerked up from where she was conversing with a white-haired, tweed-suited pharmacologist. “Jesus, Pendergast, what the hell?”</p>
<p>D’Agosta looked over to see a small smile forming on Pendergast’s face, and he felt himself break into a grin.</p>
<p>“What the hell indeed.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Rabies,” Pendergast said. He’d checked himself out of the hospital and into a luxurious private rental, and he was reclined on a bed of pillows, gauze peeking out from below his silky black robe, sipping from a mint-garnished glass.</p>
<p>“Are you saying a whole town went corrupt and a group of people burned down half a mountain range because they were rabid?” said Margo, leaning forward in her chair.</p>
<p>Pendergast waved that away. “Hydrophobia. Humans suffering from rabies develop a profound fear of water. Water is fatal to the virus, making it in the virus’ best interests to hijack the brain of the host to insert a new terror.”</p>
<p>“Their fear of heights,” Hayward mused. “It was a symptom.”</p>
<p>“Precisely. The acrophobia, the loss of coordination, the abnormal rage and xenophobia: these are all neurological symptoms. Coincidence could explain the first, radiation poisoning the second, and religious frenzy the last, but only a disease of the brain could cause all three.”</p>
<p>“It seems like pretty thin evidence to rest a whole case on,” Hayward protested.</p>
<p>“On the contrary, Captain, there is an abundance of evidence. The widespread nature of the symptoms could only point to an environmental cause. And then there is the matter of the well.”</p>
<p>“The well?” said D’Agosta.</p>
<p>Pendergast nodded. “Three months previous, a new well was dug to supplement the water supply of the town. This corresponds temporally to the beginning of the neurological effects, and to the initial corruption and depravity of the citizens. You should congratulate yourself, Vincent, on your choice of soda rather than water at the local diner.”</p>
<p>“Oh, hell,” D’Agosta said in sudden realization of how close he may have come to disaster himself were it not for his atrocious health choices.</p>
<p>“It just seems rather far-fetched,” Hayward countered. “Mass insanity caused by a virus?”</p>
<p>“Nothing could be more down to earth. The rabies virus, for instance, attacks the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus, the centers that control memory and emotion, and alter how cells release neurotransmitters to cause fear, confusion, and hallucinations. Would you rather trust in a well-documented side effect of certain viruses, or believe that a whole town of human beings could simply be corrupt and homicidal?”</p>
<p>Hayward said nothing.</p>
<p>“I would wager nearly anything that the examination of any Deer Canyon citizen would reveal a virus, or possibly even an ambitious bacterium, that is neuro-effective and that is harmed by glutamate, a neurotransmitter connected with height-related vertigo, or some other chemical.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid your wager might have to stay hypothetical,” Margo said.</p>
<p>“Why is that?” asked Hayward.</p>
<p>“Because the fire switched directions and moved back down the mountain range. It hit Deer Canyon in the middle of the night, and there were no survivors.”</p>
<p>D’Agosta and Hayward exchanged a glance.</p>
<p>Pendergast rolled his injured shoulder gingerly and took a sip of his drink. “Et in pulverum reverteris.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings for: blood and injury, fire, burning (fairly explicit), viruses</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This fic is brought to you by: too much time spent hiking alone in the mountains north of Tucson. I wrote 90% of it about five years ago, including the bit about viruses, so please forgive any lapses in writing quality. I swear I’m a better writer now</p>
<p>I was inspired to finally fill in the gaps and post this by the fact that two (2) entire fics for this series were published in December. I hope all three of the surviving P+C fans out there enjoy this</p>
<p>Thanks for reading</p></blockquote></div></div>
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